In place of a Second Amendment, Canadians have collective head-scratching about why it isn’t obvious that an assault rifle doesn’t belong in the hands of an ordinary citizen. “Who needs that?” is the typical Canadian question. “Nobody,” is the typical refrain. And yet it seems that a lot of people do “need that,” or claim to. This month—in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., massacre, and which saw another school shooting, this time at Lone Star College in Houston—the National Rifle Association added more than 200,000 Obama-wary members to its four-million-plus ranks. And last weekend, Guns Across America—an online community of American gun enthusiasts—drew thousands of people in state capitals to protest President Obama’s new gun-control proposal. Obama’s inauguration this week followed a series of proposed congressional actions that would, among other things, reinstate the Clinton-era ban on assault weapons and limit legal ammunition magazines to 10 rounds. According to a new poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, 41 per cent of Americans are fond of the NRA—loony Wayne LaPierre and all—meaning 41 per cent of Americans are also fond of military assault weapons. Who needs that? Apparently, they do.

But why? I don’t know anything about guns, and I’ve never in my life shot one (unless you count a Super Soaker), which means that, really, I have no business answering this question. So I thought I’d ask someone else. Willem Veenhof is a 71-year-old gun owner and resident of Brevard, a small town of about 7,000 people in western North Carolina. He owns an indoor shooting range called Bear Arms. I asked him why any normal, mentally stable person would need an AR-15, the big black shiny gun we see on TV—the same kind of gun Adam Lanza and James Holmes used to commit unspeakable crimes—and he told me this: “It’s an ideal weapon for varmint hunting.”

“The AR-15,” said Veenhof, “has its specific place in the hunting scene.” That place is for shooting small animals at short range, because a “long-range gun is a high-powered round” that “would blow to pieces whatever you hit, and when you’re hunting for meat, you don’t want to blow the meat to pieces.” So why not use a less formidable old-school hunting rifle? Because, says John Anderson, editor of The Varmint Hunter magazine, “Let’s say you were out hunting. If [the game] was running,” the AR-15 allows “you to get a shot off faster” than a typical hunting rifle would. Faster as in 45 rounds per minute. That’s a lot of varmint.

Veenhof and Anderson don’t come off as guys who loathe President Obama, or anyone. They’re just annoyed that the people trying to disarm them know little to nothing about the arms they carry. (The popular notion that hunters do not use semi-automatic weapons is a perfect example of this.) Explaining marksmanship to gun control activists is, from their perspective, I imagine, a lot like explaining evolution to a group of creationists. You’ve lost the game before you’ve begun.

Still, justified as they think they are in using so-called assault rifles, the question remains: who needs that? Even Anderson will admit that the AR-15 is not essential for varmint hunting—“I don’t know if anybody needs a gun like that, but certainly a lot of people like a gun like that”—nor is it the most popular gun for hunting small animals. So why the American obsession with guns that can kill so many so fast?

Veenhof said that beyond hunting, he “needs” a semi-automatic to protect himself from would-be home invaders or potential gang threats. “If you are involved in a gang situation, what’s good about a gun with a couple of rounds in it?” he asked. Veenhof keeps a gun in his night table and another one in an undisclosed location in his house. He also carries one on his person, in case he is attacked on the go. Like millions of his countrymen, he is perpetually prepared for the absolute worst eventuality, with weapons capable of inflicting the absolute worst, and yet he has never, in all his 71 years, been in a shooting. Maybe the operative question then isn’t “Who needs that?” but “Who—or what—makes someone think he does?”

Greg Bell is a 24-year-old Albertan gun owner and Canadian soldier. The first time he fired a gun, he was 10 years old. He owns a semi-automatic. I asked him why, unlike Veenhof, he doesn’t feel the need to sleep close to his guns; why he is perfectly content with Canada’s gun laws, which are draconian by U.S. standards. Because we don’t have “a right to bear arms in our Constitution,” he said, “you don’t have millions of people screaming out for the open forum of guns.” In other words, Canada lacks a constitutionally validated paranoia, and the firearm neuroses that follow. America’s paranoia has been festering for centuries. Perhaps Bell is onto something, an evolutionary shift the gun-control lobby cannot stop: the American right to bear arms has morphed into a pathological need that is not quelled but bolstered by each school shooting. Guns in the United States are like sleeping pills—millions of Americans can’t sleep without them.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/just-whats-so-special-about-the-ar-15/feed/100Selling guns without mandatory checks on new owners [UPDATED]http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/selling-guns-without-mandatory-checks-on-new-owners/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/selling-guns-without-mandatory-checks-on-new-owners/#commentsWed, 15 Feb 2012 21:56:14 +0000John Geddeshttp://www2.macleans.ca/?p=240209There’s not much point prolonging the argument about the government’s determination to scrap the registry for rifles and shotguns. But as Bill C-19, An Act to amend the Criminal Code …

There’s not much point prolonging the argument about the government’s determination to scrap the registry for rifles and shotguns. But as Bill C-19,An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act, comes up this evening for a final vote in the House—its passage assured by the Conservative majority—Canadians on both sides of this bitter debate should consider the practical implications of the outcome.

One important matter is what will now happen when guns are bought and sold by individuals. After the gun registry’s introduction in 2003, any transfer of a gun’s ownership had to be approved by the federal firearms registrar, since the gun changing hands had to be registered by its new owner.

When the Tories shred the registry, of course, that obligation will disappear with it.

There will still, thankfully, be mandatory licencing of gun owners. So I had guessed that an individual selling a gun would, at least, have to make sure the buyer is duly licenced. When Bill C-19 was tabled last fall, I looked for this new mechanism, and was surprised to find that the legislation only stipulates the seller of a gun must have “no reason to believe” the buyer “is not authorized to acquire and possess that kind of firearm.”

Why such a weak obligation? Why not specify that the seller must make sure the buyer has a licence? I’ve asked the Public Safety department that question and I will post the answer when I get it. [UPDATED BELOW]

It’s not as if there isn’t an obvious way for a seller to check up on the buyer. After all, there will still be a federal firearms registrar. Indeed, the new law says that a seller of a gun “may request” information from the registrar about whether the prospective buyer “holds and is still eligible to hold” a gun licence. Again, then, why not specify that the seller must request that verification?

It seems to me that leaving this up to the discretion of the seller is an obvious flaw. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews doesn’t see it that way. When I asked Toews about it at his news conference this morning, he said, “It is very clear that there is a legal prohibition against the individual from selling to firearm a person who is not licenced. So that it would be a criminal breach for the person to do that.”

To me, it seems clear only that I’d be prohibited from selling my rifle to a person I “have reason to believe” isn’t authorized to buy. But how exactly would I have reason to believe one way or the other? It’s not as if I’m obligated to call the registrar and ask.

Toews also said, in exasperated tones, that getting rid of the registry will not make any difference at all when it comes to buying and selling guns. His words: “I think many people forget that the registry has nothing to do with the licencing and the transfer of firearms from a licenced owner to another licenced owner.”

Actually, the registry fundamentally changed the process of transferring guns between licenced owners. Licencing includes no mechanism under which the federal authorities must be alerted to the private sale of a gun. Their approval became a requirement only when every firearm required a separate registration certificate, valid only for a given owner, and thus a new certificate had to be issued when any gun was sold.

That’s not to say licencing has not been a key part of the buying and selling of registered guns. It’s the licencing of owners—not the registering of weapons—that involves the most background checks. And the licence is revoked when a court finds a gun owner to be a public safety risk. But it was the moment of registration that brought the seller and buyer into contact with the registrar, who would then check to see if the buyer’s licence status had changed.

A final, broader observation here. The licencing of gun owners is the more useful and, frankly, intrusive part of federal gun-control regulations. It has always seemed to me nonsensical for the Conservatives to argue that forcing honest duck hunters and farmers to register their guns is a grievous affront, but requiring them to get an owner’s licence is entirely benign.

In fact, licencing and registration regulations are closely related and grew from the same public policy concerns, albeit decades apart. When it came to the buying and selling of guns, at least, they made sense together. I don’t see what principle is served by eliminating one while leaving the other in place. I only see a system made less effective.

UPDATE:

On my question about why sellers aren’t simply required to check on the prospective buyer’s licence with the firearms registrar, I received an emailed answer from the media relations officers at the Public Safety department.

It begins: “This government remains committed to reducing the administrative burdens for law abiding gun owners.” So I take it that the first and cardinal reason for not making it mandatory for sellers to check up on buyers is merely to make transferring the gun easier.

The answer goes on to note that a seller might “physically inspect” the buyer’s licence or might “have personal knowledge” of the buyer’s licence status. Well, sure. But I think anybody can see that it would be better to check the system to be certain. Just in case the guy’s been in court lately or something.

Indeed, the department reminds me that the seller, when in doubt, is supposed to pick up the phone and verify the buyer’s licence with the RCMP Canadian Firearms Program: “Bill C-19 ensures that the transferor has a legal right to request and receive that information.”

That’s a good thing. So I ask again, Why not make that check mandatory? Oh, wait—my note from Public Safety reasserts the government’s reasoning: “We do not support additional burdens placed up law abiding, licenced gun owners.”

It’s not very persuasive. I find it hard to believe even most opponents of the gun registry would very vigorously object to being asked to pick up the phone and make a simple inquiry before they go to sell a gun.